


Katniss Loves the Rain

by ealamusings



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Childhood Memories, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Pre-Epilogue Mockingjay, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 08:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5409845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ealamusings/pseuds/ealamusings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Submitted for GBT Everlark on tumblr, for the inspiration prompt: Rain</p>
<p>This drabble is about Katniss and her evolving relationship with the rain.</p>
<p>(I was inspired by the beautiful scenes near the end MJ2 - Katniss and Peeta sitting in their doorway watching the rain, and her coming to his bed to tell him him ‘Real’.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Katniss Loves the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Appreciative thanks to Suzanne Collins for her amazing novels and inspirational characters. 
> 
> And a grateful hug to my lovely Beta, everlarked (on AO3) and finduilasnumenesse (on tumblr) for all her help!

**Image credit:**  http://flickrhivemind.net/blackmagic.cgi?id=22952310190&url=http%3A%2F%2Fflickrhivemind.net%2FTags%2Fdamascus%252Cnight%2FInteresting%3Fsearch_type%3DTags%26textinput%3Ddamascus%252Cnight%26photo_type%3D250%26method%3DGET%26noform%3Dt%26sort%3DInterestingness%23pic22952310190&user=&flickrurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/36525190@N04/22952310190

 

Katniss lay awake listening to the rain. It pattered on the roof above her bed, and ran in rivulets down the window pane. For as long as she could remember, the rain had been evocative. As time passed, it had became layered with complexity and contradiction. But always within its rhythm, there was a kind of music.

In the months since she had come home, the rain-song had taken on new and intriguing nuances. Tonight it charged the cool air with a sense of expectation that kept her from sleep. So she lay in her bed, and considered the truth in it.

******

When Katniss was five, the rain never held anything but the security of her family’s love. Here, safe in her home in the Seam, she was cozy and dry. She was too innocent to know the poverty that lived outside their door. For her, it was warm blankets and a full belly. It was Mother’s hand smoothing back her hair from a fevered brow. It was Father’s strong arms holding her as she slept.

The rain didn’t frighten her, the way it did baby Primrose, when it drummed mercilessly against the window panes. Mother would gather up Prim and bring her to bed, soothing away her tears as lightning flashed and thunder rolled. But Katniss wasn’t afraid. She was a big girl and she knew with a child’s confidence that nothing outside, wet chill or monstrous threat, would be permitted into her protected little world.

Even so, when the storms came, she would make her way to her parents’ bed. With Prim wrapped up in Mother’s embrace, she would approach Father instead and he’d let her in. The rain lashing against the glass or thrumming on the roof, provided a secret melody for Father. Half asleep, he would tap out a synchronized rhythm with his fingers, a familiar song conjured up and playing out in his head. It lulled Katniss into slumber and she was certain she could hear the song, too.

When she was five, Katniss loved the rain.

******

When Katniss was eleven, she learned that death lived in the rain. It rained the day Father died, a winter’s day too early for such a downpour. At first, Katniss tried to believe the rain was still good. That maybe out of empathy it was crying the tears that she was too numb to shed. Or later, that it spoke of a merciful spring not far away. But soon she began to doubt and grew afraid. She felt how the wet, icy sting could rob her body of its fragile heat and her heart of all strength.

There was only cruel indifference in the rain. The relentless beat sounded discordant and ugly in her ears. In their home, memories of Father’s songs were lost to the chattering of teeth and the sad moaning which may or may not have been the wind.

But one hollow day, at the point of greatest despair, there came an ember of warmth in a remarkable act of kindness. Katniss learned that you didn’t need to be big, strong or grown up to be brave. For the first time in months she knew what it was to feel warm and fed and hopeful.

Spring arrived overnight and with it came the knowledge of how she would survive. She could prevail against the rain. It no longer held the power to hurt in quite the same way again. But she was always wary of it, how it lurked just over her shoulder. She had seen with her own eyes the harsh price of generosity written on Peeta’s bruised face. There was no more pretty music in the rain, because she knew how precarious life could be in the storm.

When she was eleven, Katniss feared the rain.

******

When Katniss was thirteen, she knew that there would always be stormy days filled with rain that must be endured. One day, she and Gale were caught outside in a deluge. Shivering, they huddled together under a rocky ledge to wait it out. Their shared heat was welcome, but true warmth remained elusive.

Because today with the rain, there would be no hunting, which meant empty bellies tonight. There was persistent stinginess in this life. Just enough sustenance to keep moving, but never enough to satisfy. An endless hunger that occupied every waking moment. Stay alive, stay fed, protect your family. Rhythmic. Like the rain beating against trees and rippling the surface of puddles. Not quite music, rather more like a downbeat and depressing tattoo for her to obey.

Maybe Katniss didn’t fear the rain anymore, but oh, how she wanted to go home, dry off and hide from it. That night, Prim crawled in bed with Mother. Alone, hungry, and without the warmth of her sister’s body, Katniss searched for comfort. In the dark she found a memory, the promising ember from the boy with the bread, and curled her body around its warmth. She clung to the dandelion that reminded her that the rain would end and she wasn’t doomed. But the downpour lasted for days.

When she was thirteen, Katniss hated the rain.

******

When Katniss was sixteen she was thrown into an arena that was designed for death, but instead heard a promise that she’d go home. In a dark and damp cave, she was given a remembrance of being five years old again, and something more. Because how could it be possible to feel hope when everything was so awful just outside the stone walls?

The rain was a reprieve from the killing, though it came with conditions. But Katniss was a survivor and Peeta was great at this stuff. In the drip, drip, drip through the rocks, she tried to find a song. Instead, she discovered the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and a familiar touch of warmth from years ago. Just a hint of home, of being lulled to sleep, one beat overlapping and drowning out the other. It gave her comfort. And courage.

Then came the basket. How happy, how hungry, how close they were… How unexpected in such a place as this.

Later that year, the rain pelted down on two victor-survivors as the train sped along its track. Hunger was forgotten in light of greater fears for those she loved. But she found in the rain a renewed discovery. A refuge in the storm. There was safety in Peeta’s arms when the world outside declared there could be none. Wrapped up tight in the golden warmth, she held on to sanity. But just beyond its glow, the dark edges of the tempest threatened no matter how fast they travelled. She feared she would never outrun it. For the sake of those she loved, she had to try.

When she was sixteen, Katniss clung to the faint hope that she could escape the rain, if only in small but desperate acts.

******

When Katniss was seventeen, for a period of time there was no rain because she lived deep underground. The food was bland, the air was stale, and the only music was the robotic whir and hiss of mechanical things forcing life where it had no business existing. She feared that she would become as artificial as this environment, if others had their way.

She should have felt safe here, but safety was an illusion because she knew it wasn’t real. The rain continued to fall outside whether she felt it or not. There was a pernicious dampness in the caverns of District 13 that taunted her. She feared that she would never again feel Peeta’s sheltering comfort. Katniss would have gladly endured the worst the rain had to offer if she could just have him back.

Was there any hope left? Maybe with her sacrifice, there could be real peace. Her loved ones free from harm. Her gift to all of Panem’s children that they only know a five year old’s love of the rain.

When she was seventeen and living underground, Katniss missed the rain and the flicker of hope that could be found there.

******

When Katniss was eighteen, she observed how the rain fell in equal measure on the destruction as it did on the goodness that remains. She and Peeta sat looking out on one rainy day in District 12, from the shelter of their home. Outside their door, it showered down on ruined surfaces of stone, wood and metal. It dripped off petals of primroses. It formed rivulets of mud and ash and turned the meadow green once more.

There was music in the rain again. It wasn’t a child’s simple song, but a grown woman’s symphony. Nightmares and comfort wrapped in bittersweet harmony, like dandelions on top of a graveyard.

She stopped to contemplate Peeta’s face. Serious, hinting at that hidden world locked away inside of him. Katniss was taken back to a day so long ago - could it actually be that less than two years had passed? Fixated on him as he fixated on something else. Feeling normal. Back then, it had been a sweet sensation. Today it was something more. She remembered while looking at him that hunger could be a pleasurable thing.

Katniss wondered what Peeta thought as he stared out at the rain. What kind of music did he hear? Was it full of melancholy and regret? Or lingering fears? She worried that it only reminded him of pain, and she longed to show him the beauty in the rain-song. Wished that she knew how to sing a melody like she did when she was five, just for him.

That night, as she lay in bed listening to the rain beating its staccato rhythm, she smiled, because she heard the song he longed to hear. Her boy with the bread had come home. And the time had come to answer the single remaining question that had filled the imperceptible space between them. Her pulse quickened as a single word resounded in her head in time with the beat of her heart. Real.

Katniss left her bed and made her way down the hall. At the foot of the stairs, Buttercup’s ever-watchful eyes regarded her. She thought maybe he winked, as if he could read her mind, but she didn’t scowl. They didn’t have secrets anymore. Or maybe it was just a trick of light from the oil lamp she carried in her hand.

She paused for only a second at his doorway. It was always open, as was hers. They were always attentive. Both alert to each other’s need for comfort when the nightmares came. But tonight Peeta was sleeping peacefully. Perhaps he was privy to the song drifting in through his open window, after all.

The rain was beading on the sill and on the floor. The damp curtains fluttered in the gentle breeze. She should close the window, but Katniss couldn’t bring herself to do it. To rob him of this piece of himself. Let the rain come in.

When she slipped under the blankets, Peeta welcomed her into the comfort of his embrace without a word. They lay in silence listening to the rain, not asleep, but peaceful. There were no horrors lurking on the periphery of sleep tonight, only a warmth between them that had a familiar heat behind it.

Katniss moved to the spot where she always rested her head. She expected that the strong and steady beat of Peeta’s heart would drown out the rain, but instead she heard the synchronization of both rhythms. Evocative as always, but this time teaching her that every growing thing needs the rain, hungers for it. That love lives in the rain, too.  
She reached across and took his hand.

When she was eighteen, Katniss learned once more what it was to love the rain.


End file.
